This puppy doesn’t think it’s possible to have too many vegetables. Photo: snugglepup via Flickr
In these times of economic crisis, rising poverty, and diet-related health problems, you'd think local governments would have bigger priorities than counting the number of squash and broccoli plants on people's lawns. Unfortunately that's not the case for Georgia resident Steve Miller, a landscaper by profession and organic farmer by heart, who's been caught tomato-red-handed growing a downright offensive number of vegetable plants on his property outside of Atlanta. (The exact number of criminal plants unknown.)
Dubbed "Cabbage-Gate" by friends and neighbors of Miller, officials in Dekalb County, Georgia, are suing him for $5,000 in fines for not having his land properly zoned to grow such an apparently ridiculous number of vegetables -- even after he stopped growing them and got rezoned.
If the county is suing this long-time hobby farmer for growing too many vegetables, how many are "acceptable" anyway? Twenty? Eleven? As many as you want as long as that doesn't include cabbage?
via grist.org
Just when I thought life could not get more silly - this!
This weekend I will be talking more about our disconnect with food and the natural world.
My context - Jane Jacobs said that Dark Ages arrive when people forget. When they forget because of a cultural bias how to do important things.
Such as today - how to raise a child - what an education is - how to grow and cook food. All of these things are of course connected in one meta thing that we have forgotten - that we are part of nature and how nature herself works.
We have disconnected from nature and so we have got completely lost.
This weekend I will offer up a few stories of how others are finding their way home - stories that any of us can emulate. For the way home is available - we can remember.
